Friday, March 18, 2011

Working & Homeschooling

On Monday night, I took one of my doula clients to the childbirth class at Community Hospital here in Syracuse. Wednesday, I spent the morning with her at her OB appointment. Last night, I was "at work" from 4pm to 9pm, picking up brochures for the Doula Connection and then driving out to Auburn Memorial Hospital to talk to their childbirth class about doulas. From late this afternoon through Sunday afternoon, I'm going to be spending most of my time at Shoppingtown Mall, at the Sweet Little Repeats consignment sale, talking to folks about doulas and our group. I'm still working on reading through Silent Knife so that I can write a book report about it for BirthWorks.

On some of the homeschooling boards I frequent, moms have been talking about planning out their curriculum for next year. I'm not even close to being there yet. We still have half of Story of the World left to go, Patrick is 1/4 of the way through the Saxon Math that I bought him in December and Delilah has just started the new grammar and spelling books that our friend Donna gave us. My guess is that the stuff we're doing now will take us into September.

Here are Patrick and Delilah this morning, working on their math lessons. Patrick did Saxon Math 6/5 lesson 38 and Delilah did CLE Math 206 lesson 6 today. Delilah seems to be having trouble with her math lately, and has needed extra help. Both kids have been doing math practice on http://www.ixl.com/

Tim finished the book of Luke with the kids last night. I don't know how many times that makes it that they've heard it read aloud; it makes me really happy that Tim reads the Bible with them every day.

We did chapter 21 in Story of the World this week. The kids read the chapter aloud to each other and they read books from the library to go along with the chapter (which was about the Medes and the Persians). Yesterday, they watched an episode of Liberty's Kids that we had taped.

In art, the kids had their art class with Miss Donna at the Manlius library on Monday. They painted with her, using a cut cucumber to make prints. Delilah and Ben made rainbow pictures with glue and Fruit Loops at the Y on Wednesday. Today the kids have been making collages with boxes we were going to recycle and old magazines.

We had our regularly scheduled gym & swim class at the Y on Wednesday afternoon. Thursday afternoon, we went to a "Learning about Ireland/ St. Patrick' Day" thing with our homeschool group.

Balancing working and homeschooling has worked really well this week. Even though I've had things to do for work most days, I've been able to fit in all of our homeschooling work and activities.

There are only 11 days until I fly to Oregon for the Midwifery Today conference. I'm very, very excited. I should probably write up a list of assignments before then so that the kids don't have an entire week off school while I'm away.

Birthing Fabulousness

If you're in the Syracuse, NY or the surrounding area and are currently pregnant or considering another baby, send me an email or call me to learn about what a doula can do for you. I'm currently offering free in-person consultations and will hold your spot for up to one week while you decide if you want me to attend your birth.

Want me to be Your doula?

Below is my handy "calendar of availability," hosted by doulamatch.net. You can check to see if I'm available around the time that your baby is due. Then just email me at naturalparentingsupport@hotmail.com to set up a consultation.